Oh, well if you’re talking walkthroughs to circumvent difficult gameplay situations, I’m totally on board! Today’s games are definitely better, as you mentioned, at guiding the player, but they can still be tricky. And older games — whew, am I glad we have guides for some of those. ;)

Thanks for reading and commenting. I really appreciate it. :)

I have strongly mixed feelings about the information available online — on the one hand, it really does seem to enable gamers seeking a shortcut to a “perfect playthrough,” and I’ll admit to having given in to that temptation more than once. On the other hand, I have a lot of memories from when I was younger of games like Final Fantasy or Maniac Mansion where I would hit a point where I simply didn’t know what it was I needed to do next, and I just couldn’t find the right NPC in the game or hadn’t made some connection that the game expected me to make on my own.

The irony, perhaps, is that most games aren’t built like that anymore — they’re a lot better at leading you where they want you to go while making it look like a player choice (see: the Half Life games), and there’s still a walkthrough or a strategy guide that’ll make even that unnecessary.

It’s a strange world. I (almost) never felt like I needed a guide in Mass Effect 2, and yet I can’t entirely imagine playing Final Fantasy XIII without one. (There are just so many intricacies to the boss battles, and too many quirks that I can’t really imagine figuring out on my own. “Oh, you just stand there and let him hit you. Of course.“)

And given how little choice is involved in FFXIII, that seems rather wrong.